Every September is the same: you walk into class and frantically look around for someone—anyone—that you know. And when you do find that someone, you realize that, hey, maybe the class won’t be so bad after all. But then you look up at the wall and find the dreaded seating chart that places you all the way across the room from your friend projected on the board while the teacher stands at the front of the room, arms crossed and feet tapping.

So, I’m here to say thank you to those teachers that don’t have the fateful seating chart. It’s much appreciated. As teenagers, we’re much more apt to enjoy a class and therefore pay more attention to it if we aren’t stranded alone and bored out of minds for lack of proper company. Not only that, but it does give us  better opinion of you.

And, I get it. Seating charts are necessary to get to know names in the beginning of the year. But after a while, like, say, November, I think free seating is warranted.

I’d just like to say thank you again to all those kind-hearted teachers that allow us to sit near our friends. Although it may seem like a small act, it really does help us make it through the long, long school day with our sanity still intact. You make our stressful, laborious high school lives so much easier when you allow us to choose where we’d like to sit down.